Conventional rear view mirrors of the type which are attached to the side of a vehicle and having a single planar surface suffer from a major deficiency. Such conventional rear view mirrors typically are adjusted by a vehicle operator so that such mirror will indicate to the vehicle operator when another vehicle is approaching in the lane adjacent thereto. However, once the vehicle in the adjacent lane begins to overtake and overlap the lead vehicle, there is a "blind spot" just prior to the time that the trailing vehicle in the adjacent lane enters the peripheral vision of the driver in the lead vehicle wherein the conventional rear view mirror will not have an image of such trailing vehicle in the adjacent lane. This problem, it is speculated, has caused thousands of accidents wherein the driver of the lead vehicle has changed lanes into the path of the trailing vehicle because no image of the trailing vehicle appeared in the side mounted rear view mirror.
Because of the magnitude of the aforementioned problem, various side mounted rear view mirrors have been devised in an attempt to overcome it. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,628,851 to Robertson, 4,306,770 to Marhauer and 4,311,382 to Graff show contoured mirrors which will give the driver a view of not only the lane beside the driver at some distance behind the vehicle the driver is operating, but will also show a vehicle in the aforementioned blind spot. A problem with the contoured mirror concept as exemplified by the aforementioned three patents is that there is considerable distortion on the contoured portion of the mirror which will tend to confuse the driver using these structures. Furthermore, there is a blending of the images of what is in the adjacent lane a considerable distance back from the vehicle utilizing the mirror and the image of what may or may not be in the blind spot area. This further can cause confusion and it is well-known that confusion for even an instant can cause vehicular accidents.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,826,563 to Davis shows a rear view mirror apparatus which has one mirror above and one mirror below which are independently adjustable to give the vehicle operator a normal rear view perspective on the adjacent lane in one mirror and to show the blind spot area on the other mirror and overlapping what is shown in the first mirror. Because of the overlapping situation, some confusion by the user could result and furthermore there could be some confusion by the user as to which mirror is showing which area of the adjacent lane.
Another prior art structure has been the use of a convex mirror glued to a normal rear view mirror but while such a structure is useful to indicate that there may be a car in the blind spot area, it still leads to confusion because of all of the distortion associated with convex mirrors.